What Does T-206 Mean?

One of the cool things about collecting T-206 cards is that you can call them "T-206 cards."

How cool does that sound?

"Ebay? Yeah, I do Ebay. I buy and sell T-206 cards."

Watch the immediate respect and awe you receive by casually dropping references to T-206 cards in your daily conversation.

Actually, it's neither respect nor awe, it's confusion.

Where does the T-206 name come from?

It's a good question, one I think few people who know about these cards would know the answer to.

The T-206 designation is from The American Card Catalog put together by Jefferson Burdick. It catalogs American trade cards published before 1951. It includes Cards put out by tobacco companies as well as bakeries, cabinet makers, caramel and candy makers, Cracker Jacks, and even egg and ice cream distributors.

T-206 cards are known for their white borders.
 

There are other similar sized baseball cards of the time, but the white borders set the T-206 set apart.

T-205 have gold borders and were put out in 1911.

T-207 cards all have brown backgrounds and were put out in 1912.

Most of these independent issued cards came to an end when Topps more or less took over the industry. Topps, incidentally, was a candy maker, which is why many fine, fine old Topps baseball cards have gum stains on them. Topps was originally a tobacco company known as American Leaf Tobacco.

Huh, you learn something new every day.